Phoenix
by tea3
Summary: Takes off after Golden Sun. Seeing as I wrote this before The Lost Age came out, you couldn't blame me for twisting it up.


Golden Sun Ramblings/Rantings (That Will Get Me Nowhere) [Also Titled: "Phoenix"]  
  
"The Shaman's Rod must be recovered, at all costs..." Ivan frowned, setting his glass down carefully with his small hand. Of course, Isaac was quick in giving commands. But even when Ivan knew that he would be the one to leave for the search, he hadn't hesitated in agreeing. He, Ivan, the Kalayan Prometheus, who had always weighed out everything before him prior to making a decision. He who even thought over the most simple options with care, anticipating as far as he could the result this or that decision could induce.  
"Sir, can I help you?"  
Ivan looked up through strands of his sand-colored hair to see a cocktail waitress standing across the counter. She looked at him curiously, in one way or another not quite the ordinary look, but all the same rather shrewdly and even somewhat familiarly.... Ivan blinked twice before responding: "No, thanks, I'm quite all right."  
But the woman did not move. She seemed to falter, almost reeling forward, her waves of black hair churning about her, as she suddenly fixed Ivan with an intense gaze, and boomed - or perhaps it was whispered; it achieved the same effect of freezing him: "Your past precedes you, Ivan. Three years ago you began your journey across the continents with three companions; in three days more you will be on another one, this time with only the one. At the Nonnes of August, then will you finally behold the Sacred Shaft. A penny for your fortune?" she leered, grinning up at him with the most repulsive smile; there might have been some hint of insanity behind her eyes.  
Ivan shrank back, but he was suddenly immobile, as if some emotion or instinct had fixed him in place.  
Suddenly the woman's face, which had at that point been hidden under cascades of dark hair, lifted up. Cool black eyes peered intently at him, as unfamiliar to him as the intense feel inside them before, or the whisker of insanity; both traces were gone, and seemed to be but imagined. Now she merely looked at him, eyeing him carefully, as if awaiting a reaction.  
Ivan watched her equally as carefully, then took out a small object from his pocket. He laid it on the counter and slid it to her: it was a silver denarius. The woman laughed, a natural laugh and nothing in the remote sense like her former laugh, and stopped after a moment. "I see there's no point in fooling you," she said wryly. Her voice was deep and rich and pleasant to the ears; it was musical and set the listener at ease.  
Ivan did not look up; he twirled his drink thoughtfully and said carefully, "Lady, I'd just equally like to hear your past."  
She let out a dangerous laugh. "Ivan, this is no time for formalities. Since you don't seem to recognize me, however, from my past incarnate form, I suppose I should introduce - or, rather, reintroduce - myself." She smiled a bit at her words, whirling off her laced apron with an elegant flick of her wrist and flopping down in the stool beside him.  
"Lady," said Ivan, still staring at the glass, "I think I do know you, for your presence is familiar, as if I've felt you somewhere, sometime, before, though I'm absolutely certain that I just set eyes on you a moment ago. And," he added suddenly, his green eyes smiling at, or more likely, through, the glass, "certain formerly repressed vibes have convinced me of your dangerous nature."  
A wry smile appeared on her face. "Well then, perhaps you do know me as well as you say you do, or better than you think. For in this reincarnation, in this era, I am called Magdelena and often Messalina: particularly comparable women, whose overlapping traits go beyond flowing dark hair and subtle seductiveness.... In any case, let me introduce myself as Quirina, Fay for short, master of the Ways of the sword, flames, and forecast, as well as ultimate interpreter of prognostication, humbly at your service." At this she fell smoothly to her knee before him.  
Slowly, he let his gaze fall from the glass to her dark-red form draped in the shadows. "You may rise, I think," he said in a reflective tone.  
Wordlessly she moved to the stool in silent movements, losing her articulative spur of words and grand eloquence as quickly as she had gained them. Now, strangely, she sat with her head bowed, though the position fit her - ironically, as well as her former superiority had.  
"I think - I think this is proceeding a bit too fast," Ivan said in the careful tone he always spoke in. "I know, briefly, just a fragment of who you are, and what your purpose is, for I think you are the one prophesized - by yourself, of course - that is fated to travel with me, to, well, to wherever the Rod is. But who you really are, and why you're here, and how you seem to know me so well... And that prophecy, though it is short and limited, seems to churn with truth... so I have no reason to doubt you. However - however," he repeated, "I still think that this is racing along too fast - I can't grasp it yet with my sure but careful and steady approach at everything, and yet I-I feel that this is fated to be, that it is written in the stars and that all we have to do is live and breathe to let proper fate take its course...." He swallowed. "I suppose I'm rambling in my inebriated state, am I not?" he smiled.  
"No," she said seriously. "You're not, and I perfectly understand you. Because I've been swept up in the crescending wave of life myself - to be used as another actor in the play of fate. Though it's so easy to let go and let the stars be your guide, you must realize - you are capable of setting your own future. I know it's odd for me, a prophetess, to be saying this, but it is indefinitely true. Since Prometheus stole the fire, I know that the truth of mankind isn't following the natural wave of life. After all... the world is too random for fate to exist." She winked.  
"But you foretell the Fates' will..."  
"No," she emphasized, "I dwell in the past."  
  
"Fay - you, Fay!"  
She swiveled around, her dark curls flowing about her.  
Up until that instant, Ivan had completely forgotten the crowds and the swarms at the inn's bar; he had been blind and deaf to all others outside the small square portion of the long counter where the two sat; as if the spotlight shimmered over their two stools and everything else was greyed in, though they weren't paid much attention to by the rest of the bar in spite of Fay's dramatic prophecy and her sudden bow. Now Ivan watched with interest as a heavily built man came crashing through the crowds of people, knocking over passing waiters and dishes, overturning stools, and nudging people to the side.  
"Ah, yes, well it seems that we'd better begin defying that prophecy right away and leave now," said Fay, standing and pulling Ivan from his stool by the arm.  
Ivan grabbed clumsily at his glass before it was knocked over the counter by his elbow, then went crashing to the ground with a crunch of breaking ice. He stood up uncertainly, dizzied by the crowds and their deafening laughter and noise that his ears had just a second ago been turned on to.  
"Wake up, Ivan," she said, slapping his cold skin lightly with the back of her hand. "This is no time to be spacing out over spilt wine..."  
Her words reached his ears hazily; his mind was focused elsewhere, at the tremendous fate that he had unknowingly took on his shoulders; the slap stung his skin as an after-effect and somehow brought him to reality....  
The world was a blur as he felt himself being dragged through the bar by his arm.... Noise was overcoming him, vision was escaping him, and within a few moments he fell unconscious. 


End file.
